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Web Dev: My Biggest Web Design Prediction for 2016

This blog post is an ode to anyone interested in creating a new website and is not sure how it should look. Well, actually it’s more for someone interested in creating a website that offer’s a service or sell’s a specialized product. If you’re planning to build out a blog or a crazy e-commerce website with a sh*t ton of products, then you can take this advise with a grain of salt.

Let me prelude by saying that what I’m about to tell you is not new or ground breaking. If you do a simple Google search for web design trends, you’ll see pages on pages on pages about a number of different tidbits on what’s new and cool. To tell you the truth, it’s mainly fluff and they all have one thing in common.

What’s Wrong With Web Design Now

Before I get to the meat of the post, let me express my distaste for the current trend that I still see going around. Long gone are the days of web design where you think putting a bunch of “boxes” on a web page looks good. Without the need to put anyone on blast, let me use my site as an example (Yep! I know, I’ve fallen victim to it too):

In the day’s of old, the right way to build a website was to cram as much stuff as possible to the top of the page. That being said, people (myself included) would try to stick a bunch of BS near the fold to make it look more “legit“. Fast forward to now and it just makes a website look clunky and messy. I mean seriously… look at my sh*t. I just shoved an assortment of nonsense to make the site look more “corporate”. When asking for feedback from my client’s, they would just laugh and say that they don’t even read all the babble.

The Way You Should Design It

If you listen to any good designer or developer, they’ll use buzz words like big imagery, or responsive, or parallax. Well, you can tell them that those words stank harder than the food caught in-between their teeth! …don’t deny it, you know you’ve taken a whiff of that dental floss. It smells like ass; but I digress.

Here’s the big climax to this post… My prediction/recommendation/forecasting trend/God’s honest truth about the future of web design is that everything will go one page. For lack of a better description, one page designs are simple vertical layouts that get right to the point (minimal fluff). It’s designed for the end user to experience the least amount of clicking while ascertaining the most information. It also comes in handy when trying to present your site on various platforms like tablets and mobile devices. Here’s a great example from a site we recently launched:

As you can see, everything is broken into sections and layered down into it’s simplest form. When you scroll through the site, you can view each section like a stanza or a complete thought.

Now that I’ve had my epiphany, you can guarantee a new web design for 2016!

For all of you designers and developers reading this, yes I know that one page design isn’t new! I stated that in my intro to this post. The problem is, most people either don’t know or haven’t realized that this is the way they should be thinking about design… so suck a large one and help me reinforce the fact!

For everyone else, I hope you found this informative. If you have any questions or need some advise for a new website, you know how to get ahold of me. If you completely love this post, hate this post, or like my cynical writing, be sure to leave me a comment below. I’d really appreciate it!